Australia-Based Private Debt Investors Look to Distressed Debt The pace of growth of the Australia’s private debt market has trailed behind other regions, most notably the US and Europe, but it is finally seeing an uptick. After a year-on-year decline in assets from 2013 to 2015, Australia-based assets has seen its private debt industry grow…

Credit Hedge Funds See Negative Returns in October The Preqin All-Strategies Hedge Fund benchmark returned -2.35% in October, as the industry faced a particularly volatile month on equities markets. This was in fact, the lowest monthly performance recorded by the benchmark since January 2016. It takes overall hedge fund performance in 2018 year-to-date into negative…

Europe-Focused Private Debt Assets under Management Reach $200bn The European private debt universe has exploded over the last decade, and funds focused on the region now hold $200bn in assets under management. Europe has been a key area of interest for investors in private debt. In fact, almost half (47%) of private investors surveyed by…

Strong Private Debt Performance Pushes Dry Powder to Record Highs Distressed debt has outperformed the other private debt strategies examined over the one-year horizon to December 2017, generating returns of 11%. Direct lending, however, has been the strongest strategy over the three- and five-year horizons, generating returns of 9.6% for the three years to December…

What Does the Future Hold for Private Debt? As it launches its Future of Alternatives report, Preqin has polled fund managers and investors to calculate predictions for the future of the industry in the next five years. The alternative assets industry is set to expand across all asset classes, with the private debt market set…

What Are Private Debt Investors Up to? A significant majority (60%) of investor searches issued in Q3 2018 for new private debt fund commitments in the next 12 months were for mezzanine funds, up from 45% of searches in Q3 2017. In fact, there has been an uptick in interest across all strategies, an indication…

Looking at the Private Debt Funds in Market At the start of Q4 2018, there are 396 private debt funds in market seeking an aggregate $175bn in capital. This represents an increase of seven funds in market than at the start of Q3, but the funds currently in market are seeking $5.0bn less in aggregate…

Direct Lending Sees Banner Q3 Although private debt fundraising activity slowed in Q3 2018, with the quarter recording 31 funds holding a final close and securing a total of $24bn in capital, direct lending had a banner quarter. In Q3, four distressed debt vehicles raised $2.4bn, eight mezzanine funds raised $1.5bn and 15 direct lending…

Private Debt Fundraising Slows in Q3 Q2 2018 was the third-largest fundraising quarter ever seen for private debt, as 36 funds secured a combined $42bn. This pace of fundraising has not been maintained in Q3, with 31 funds closed in the quarter raising a total of $24bn. However, funds closed in the first three quarters…

Will Europe Direct Lending Activity Outpace North America? Direct lending is a relatively young strategy, but has gained traction in the past five years or so, quickly becoming one of the more dominant private debt fund types. As with the larger private debt universe, North America and Europe account for the majority of direct lending…